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Know Your Neighbors
Sutro Tower
Twitter Account Gives Locals Taste of the ‘Best View in the Bay Area’Written by
Published Oct. 30, 2022 • 2:23pm
Sutro Tower has been an iconic and quirky part of SF’s skyline, for nearly 50 years. Since its rise in 1973, the 977-foot TV and radio broadcasting tower has played many parts. It’s grown from a hated eyesore to an iconic landmark. More recently, it’s been the inspiration for a number of Karl/a the Fog-type Twitter accounts.
The latest such account to enter fraught Twitterverse is @SutroTower. Launching in August, the account has posted numerous glamor shots of its namesake with cheeky captions and friendly morning greetings to San Francisco all while amassing a small but influential following of local Twitter personalities. In the lead up to Halloween, @SutroTower has dressed up its Twitter with a ghost emoji and dubbed itself as “Haunted Sutro Tower.” But the tower, (which says is unaffiliated with Sutro Tower, Inc) insists that “there is nothing to fear about me.”
“I won’t be stalking down the hill and attacking the Golden Gate Bridge (at least not anytime soon),” wrote @SutroTower in a tongue-in-cheek email with The Standard in the spirit of the season. Though it did admit that the land upon which it is built is also home to a mansion that “many believed to be haunted.” (Adolph Gilbert Sutro, the grandson of former SF Mayor Adolph Sutro, built a creepy looking home where Sutro Tower now stands before selling the property to KGO-TV in 1948.)
As for what it plans to do next, the tower is still debating that.
“I am thinking of whether I will return to ‘Sutro Tower’ after Halloween or will I take on a new holiday themed name next month. I have some ideas, but you will just have to wait and find out,” the tower wrote.
In the meantime, Sutro says it will continue to scroll Twitter, beam broadcasts and watch over the City by the Bay.
“I am so grateful to have been part of the city’s skyline and have loved to watch the city grow and change in the […] years I have been broadcasting,” @SutroTower told The Standard. “I think what I love about San Francisco are the hills and topography. It can look very flat from up here, but I really have probably the best view in the entire Bay Area.”
It will also follow just about anyone… so long as they have a Sutro Tower tattoo.
Special powers
Converting wavy electrons into a TV signal and broadcasting TV—for free!
Arch enemies
Paid TV services.
Weaknesses
Great photos of me or the San Francisco skyline.
Lineage
A long line of truss towers.
Current mission
To safely transmit TV, radio, and essential communication services for public safety, transportation and other agencies or private providers.
'I am so grateful to have been part of the city’s skyline and have loved to watch the city grow and change in the years I have been broadcasting.'
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